FXWars! Avalanche!: LightFreeze

[LightFreeze]

Ok a quick and dirty test to see if this is the way to go

1.5Mb quicktime

http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/Avalanche1Soren.mov

any thoughts?

[joss3D]

The particle life is very short, you have to make a big cloud of snow which go up slowly.

The first particles of the avalanche are "flicking", I think they are too much large when they born .
Try to make it quite small at the beginning (in front of the avalanche) and become bigger with the age of the particle

[LightFreeze]

good points,

I dont like the `flicking` myself, thats what I`m trying to solve at the moment but I was also hoping to have a wall of snow coming down and not a `growing stream` but we`ll have to see how that works out

heres the latest test (snows a bit dirty):shrug:

divx 500k
http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/003.avi

I am hoping to get one stream working the way I want before I hit the render wall of mutiple streams

[LightFreeze]

think it looks a bit better now

I`m happier with the texture but I need to tweek the lighting methinks

650k divX

http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/006ReC.avi

think I will try multiple streams now just to check that they mix ok

any crits?

[LightFreeze]

OK this clip gives an idea of how the multiple streams will look, although the shading (which caught me by surprise :shrug: ) makes it look like smoke and there`s probably too much of it but hey its only a test!!

1500k DivX

http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/Multi003A.avi

[LightFreeze]

This one goes in the other direction by having a mass tumble down the mountain instead of the streams in the previous clips and now I`m begining to think that a real avalanche has a mixture of the two so maybe thats the next test

500k DivX

http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/004.avi


any crits or suggestions?

[Triple G]

I think you've got the right idea...a mixture of the two is probably the way to go. A real avalanche is a mixture of a lot of complex events. It only looks simple until you actually study what's going on. :D

[LightFreeze]

or try to recreate it :scream:

[LightFreeze]

Latest clip, seeing how things are coming together,

this is a comp so that I can better match the ground snow with the avalanche

http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/010.avi

I think I need to slow it down when it hits the more level ground

C&C welcome

[Triple G]

Looking pretty good...my main crit at this point would be that the motion of the snow itself doesn't seem to be coming down the mountain. It's kind of tough to tell with the moving camera, so I could be wrong. But it kind of looks like the snow is just billowing up vertically behind the leading edge and more or less staying in place.

[LightFreeze]

Yes I know what you mean, as if theres some super plough just behind the snow doing all the work

but I`m baseing all my motion on the clip on this page

http://juneaualaska.com/stories/avalanche/

so I`m not too sure what to change to get it closer.

Thanks for the comments

[Hamburger]

Hey LightFreeze I can't get those videos working, which codec are you using? (I'm using the latest Divx too! :shrug: )

[LightFreeze]

its DivX 5.02 although the first one is Xvid

anyone else having problems?

[Hamburger]

Thanks that's better, I just downloaded the 500k one and the latest video and it's fine.

You are on the right track LightFreeze, the snow actually looks like snow, it's powdery and everything. But my only crit is that it seems to get narrower and narrower the further it goes down the hill. From what I've seen about avalanches and stuff on TV, those things are pretty wide. But all in all I think your doing a great job. :applause:

[LightFreeze]

Thanks

You are right when you say it gets narrower, its because of the geometry of the hillside, it

becomes a valley at that point but its hard to see that because the landscape is so similar

although I`m working on something that will hopefully make the layout of the land easier to see

or I might just stop it before that part not sure really

[LightFreeze]

OK I`ve added some trees onto the hillside to try and make the topology easier to see

but I dont know if it works?

what do you think?


http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/011.avi

[Hamburger]

Yeah that's much better, you get a better sense of scale now. All you have to do now is make the avalanche destroy those trees!!! :wip: :wip: :wip:

[jussing]

Looking good! It looks very violent. Now let's have some destruction! :twisted:

Two things:

a) you have some flickering when your particles die... don't know if that's WIP or what, but I thought I'd mention it.

b) I think the cloud looks TOO big compared to the small "center" that travels down the mountain. My advice would be either make the cloud smaller, or make the "center" wider. :shrug:

Cheers,
- Jonas

[DiGiman]

LightFreeze,
what software are you using? And what kind of render times are you having on those particles?

[LightFreeze]

Jussing
a) you have some flickering when your particles die... don't know if that's WIP or what, but I thought I'd mention it.

Thanks ,I hadn`t noticed that, too busy looking at the mass to notice the edges

b) I think the cloud looks TOO big compared to the small "center" that travels down the mountain. My advice would be either make the cloud smaller, or make the "center" wider.

dont know about this I think my dimensions are not too far from my main ref clip

http://juneaualaska.com/stories/avalanche/


Hi Digiman I`m using lightwave and the busy frames are about 4 min each

[LightFreeze]

Next clip brings in some destruction but I still haven`t dealt with the poping when the particles die and because this is the first time I`ve used HardFX the way I`ve constructed this makes it hard to tweak without throwing other things out.

http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/013.avi

I`m not happy with the way it looks(its certainly not the way it looked in my head before I started) and feel it might be best to use what little knowledge I`ve gained on mixing particles with HardFX and starting again

[jussing]

Hey there.

You've really nailed the "look" of the main cloud. :thumbsup:

It looks cool when it topples the tree.

Main gripe is how the particles appear to come out under the house, before they topple it. -And I think it looks a bit weird that the bottom of the house topples first, but that's propably because your avalanche emitters skate on the ground, and don't bounce, right?

Looking good,
- Jonas

[LightFreeze]

That was one of my problems, I couldnt get particles to move any geometry so all the demolision is done by an invisible collision object, it works but it doesn`t look accurate:shrug:

[LightFreeze]

OK final entry

managed to tweak a few things however there is still a lot of problems in it but its gonna have to do

http://www.triton.eclipse.co.uk/clips/LightFreeze_FxWars_320.mov



think it went OK for a first atempt with Lightwaves hardFX certainly learned some new things so it cant be all bad :)

roll on the next challenge:bounce:

[jussing]

404...?

...looking forward to seing it, though...

- Jonas

[LightFreeze]

oops

fixed the link

should be ok now
thanks Jussing

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